a day in the life

if you happened to read the "day in the sei" tale of yesteryear, this is more or less what that scene looked like, now etched on paper as it has been indelibly etched in my memory.

p.s. a big thank you to the two lovely ladies of Kumamoto who created the magazine that motivated this sketch.

workplace dynamics

Beyond the occasional poop-related anecdote I haven't written much about my actual job here yet, and today is a good day to start. It's been a special day.

To begin with I shaved my head on Saturday, which startled some people when I came in this morning. I did the same thing shortly after coming here seven months ago, but since then I think the kids and my coworkers have grown accustomed to a reasonable amount of hair covering my dome. Frank appraisals of physical appearance are surprisingly common and acceptable in Japan, and the reactions have varied. They have included a girl screaming in terror and dropping her books when I came around a corner, a vague comment about the visibility of my skull shape from a teacher who never said a word to me before today, and random combinations of outright mocking and shouted compliments from the students. “Bald man! Beckham! Britney Spears!” At least 'bald' is pretty high level English vocabularly, I was impressed.

The change has also inspired some new camaraderie in a few of my students sporting the same “ぼうず”(Buddhist monk) style, netting me some more conversation and an extra milk at lunch today. Every day at lunchtime a small ritual takes place- two students will enter the teacher's room and formally ask me to accompany them back to their classroom, an offer I have yet to refuse, then take my lunch tray and walk by my side through the school as I ask them about their weekend. Then I sit down among them, ostensibly to converse in English. Since this is usually impossible, we instead talk in extremely basic Japanese, about my height or relationship status, my pick for the most handsome boy and girl in the class, or which Smash Brothers character is our favorite (we both liked Captain Falcon).

Anyway, today is also special because it's the last day of official classes for the year. The third years will all graduate next Monday, several teachers will rotate to other schools, and we'll get a whole new third of the student body fresh out of elementary in a couple weeks. I was pleasantly surprised with two goodbye notes today, one collectively from a third year class and another one from a student who I helped prepare for the English recitation contest last fall. It makes all the blood sweat and tears I've poured out to these children worthwhile.

The final reason today stands out is that I realized my responsibilities as a teacher are gradually expanding. Reading words and sentences aloud and walking around correcting written assignments with a red pen are still the bread and butter of my job, but a few teachers are starting to ask for more. Japan is captivated by Barack Obama and his speeches, and many of my teachers are extremely interested in the history of civil rights in America. While often wary of foreigners, Japan has remained a homogeneous society for thousands of years and can't really relate to the concept of discrimination (though some might disagree). So in the last few weeks I've given a handful of Powerpoint presentations outlining the work and significance of MLK, Rosa Parks, Kennedy and Obama, and read King's “I Have a Dream” speech and Obama's “Yes We Can” victory speech many, many times. To try and engage the students I've taken to doing over-the-top dramatic readings of most everything, and I'm sure at least a few second years had their teenage hearts moved and souls stirred by King's powerful words as I raised my hands gloriously to the sky proclaiming a dream and made sweeping gestures to illustrate the red hills of Georgia where everyone will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

The topics vary. Last week at Goryou J.H. a teacher asked me to make a presentation on anything I thought might be interesting, and after soliciting some student input I taught them all about sports in America. It's not a bad job that leads you to reviewing sports highlights on Youtube well into the early morning hours on a Thursday night. And damned if they didn't finally listen. The nice thing about rotating between three different Junior Highs using the same textbook and a nearly identical teaching system is that everything has the potential to do triple duty, so tomorrow I'll be giving the same presentation, projecting Michael Jordan flying from the free throw line in '93 and Babe Ruth's legendary 60th home run set to "Final Countdown" and "We are the Champions" on the pull-down classroom screens at Kanan Junior High.

Beyond that kind of stuff, the time I spend outside the classroom is usually occupied by studying kanji and Japanese vocab at my desk in the teachers' lounge, and more rarely by correcting a recent quiz or typing out the bones of a blog entry.

In short, I'm really starting to enjoy the relative day to day diversity of teaching along with the room it provides for creativity and initiative, and things only get better as I gradually get to know my students and coworkers better. Being able to talk to them helps speed up the process, as do little things like playing basketball or music with the kids during lunch breaks and participating in teachers' soccer tournaments. Only music and sports can transcend otherwise insurmountable language and cultural barriers. And every day presents enough unique challenges to keep life interesting, like being given 30 seconds at the end of class to explain in the most basic possible English the progression from Martin Luther King's work in the fifties to Obama's presidency today, and what all this means in the hearts of the American people. I can't even remember what spilled out of my mouth, but I remember the teacher writing “Change” several times on the board so I think that was the theme I went with.

So, while I'm not planning on pursuing a lifelong career in middle-school education or anything like that, I'm having a good time with it right now.

wise words from the sea

(on the risks of extreme water skiing)

"I feel you can buy more skis, but... you can't buy more people"

-surfer guy on "Step Into Liquid" (recommended)

running with ghosts

The two clocks in my apartment steadily tick and talk away increments of time, debating the finer points in low, measured voices, but ultimately agreeing on a singular truth. As I listen the dialogue crescendos and fades, the cadence shifts ever so slightly then pauses to emphasize a point, but I know that's just my own second-to-second take on reality.

Strange how that small tock can become deafening in a silent room when you lie in bed. I used to have to take the battery out of my clock at night in high school to fall asleep. Though I never really wanted to fall asleep yet anyway.

Why- why am I so deeply, so fiercely in love with this time of night? The early a.m. hours draw a serene veil of dark, electric mystery/possibility over the slumbering earth, all of its appointments suspended, its anxieties forgotten. This is a time for creativity, a time for solitude and introspection, a time to step outside and run with ghosts. Only a few other living souls roam about- though you seldom see a face you'll hear them driving down the highway, engaged in secret agendas, destinations unknown.

Mind ablaze you set out alone to jog through the still suburban backstreets, down the deserted bike paths and into the inky bamboo forest that exists for only a few unobserved hours each day. Focusing on the rhythm of your breath, suddenly a twig snaps loudly in the darkness to your left and squeezes a trigger deep in your brainstem, surging an involuntary shotgun blast of adrenaline through your blood that simultaneously shuts down the capacity for abstract thought and inverts all your instincts to Prey like the broad edge of a finger flipping off a row of light switches. Other nocturnal animals greet your newly sharpened senses; hidden jungle creatures that holler challenges from the treetops as you pass; dogs hoarsely asserting their respective jurisdictions in the distance; roosters who cry a siren's herald for the imminent dawn.

Through swirling clouds of breath I glimpsed a small Buddhist graveyard crowning a hill to the left, nestled against the crouching skeleton of an empty greenhouse. So I climbed up to sit among the polished marble and granite monuments, crafted with the harsh elegance of simple geometric figures, all angles and planes carved from smooth stone that gleams with a modest, understated luster in the faint moonlight, providing sanctuary for the spirits and earthly remains produced by generations of the same bloodline.

And I found a spot that felt right and sat there for a long time- clearing my head, listening to the wind combing the ricefields and the distant roar of the superhighway, jarred by the rooster crowing again and again- thinking about graves and my future and the last time I watched the sun rise, considering what it would feel like to become a ghost.

the noontime blogger

this is a quote from noon, made during a discussion between three friends shooting a movie, regarding two of them swapping their proposed characters.

Ken: "Yeah, it might work well that way-"
Holly: "Right! I just... I just think Taylor's a little more, you know, terrifying."
Ken: [nodding] "Probably, yeah."
Taylor: "Oh!.. I just thought Ken would make a better hermit living in the mountains, because of the beard, and the Karate, but all right..."

maybe he didn't realize how happy it made me to hear that.

the midnight jogger

You know those times when you're falling asleep, helpless and exhausted, your eyes drooping as the fading threads of your mind weave together a patchwork quilt of half-dreams, and you finally decide it's time to crawl into bed? Into your warm, pillowy bed, where you can let those weary eyelids close, relax every muscle and release your thoughts into a current of unpredictable and captivating dreams always waiting to embrace you on the dark side of your subconscious.

But first, you have to brush your teeth and wash your face, finish transferring the lesson for tomorrow's class onto your USB key, wash the last of the dishes and put them on the rack to dry, turn off the TV, stereo and lights... and when you lie down at last, you realize that the gentle fuzziness enshrouding your brain has been rudely swept away by an undesired second wind.

Balancing constantly on the verge of exhaustion throughout college had dependably subdued these curious energy reserves for the last four years, but now they are creeping back into my nights and pushing me further and further into the early a.m. hours. Despite getting up at half past seven, putting in a full day of work followed by dinner, karate, a few episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and a starlit jog to the school where I'll work tomorrow that landed me home a few minutes ago, I still can't sleep. The time is 3:11am.

I did get a new weekday record of sleep last night (almost nine hours), which made me feel amazingly awake at school today. I think it made me friendlier. Which in turn gave the kids more incentive to talk to me, certainly something I need to encourage. I even got a big hug from one of the 'cool kids', the school soccer star, a powerful leader of children. Hooray! Dear diary, maybe this means I'm popular now. Can I somehow relive my awkward junior high days as the grizzled foreign jock / occasional musician/ cat's cradle master and repair all my insecurities from that transitory time? No, I guess not, but it's nice to notice that many of those insecurities seem to have faded away with time. Along with my hairline. (well, maybe they've just been replaced by different insecurities. but I like to think that relatively mild premature balding has forced me to come to grips with my own mortality at an early age).

Anyway, now the shadowed fingers of sleep are gently brushing the fringes of my thoughts, beckoning seductively toward the dark bedroom. Hopefully now, at last, I can rest.

The challenge? Defeat 9,000 other near-naked men. The prize? Glory.

Check this out.

Though it's description as one of Japan's three oddest festivals may lead you to believe things like this are rare, I came dangerously close to joining a similar-sounding event translated as "Naked man wrestling" up in Fukuoka last month.

Also, please consider the fact that Near-Naked Man Wrestling has been around longer than America has been a country.